Outdoor Chairs Get Freshened Up with Behr Marquee Exterior Paint

First of all, I’m so excited to announce that I’m heading to California this week to meet the fabulous people at Behr Paint. I’ve had such a great time being a part of the DIY Expert Team for 2014 and it’ll be so nice to meet them all in person! I’m heading out on Wednesday morning, so be sure to follow along on Instagram and Twitter. In the meantime, here’s the latest project that I’ve done with Behr Marquee paint – and it’s a great one for all this crisp fall weather we’ve been having!

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My parents have a great paved patio area by their front door and garden, where we often sit out for coffee on weekends when I visit. It needed an update for the new fall season, so I got the idea to take some weathered Adirondack chairs (also called Muskoka chairs up here in Canada) that have been hanging out down at the dock and freshen them up with paint.

With some new seasonal plants and accessories, the patio looks so inviting for fall now! I tend to do outdoor projects and freshen things up in the spring, but why not take advantage of the cooler weather to update some outdoor pieces and enjoy them in the fall too?

This is what the front patio looked liked before. There is a big pine tree right above the patio, which rains down orange needles and sap all the time, so please disregard all the needles there. It’s a daily task to keep it clean. The wire patio set is perfect for lunches in the summer, but it doesn’t get much activity once fall and winter come around, so I moved it back to the pool deck to store it for the season.

With the patio set out of the way, it was time to tidy up the garden a bit, move the summer flowers out and update everything with fall plants. My mom put together this quick arrangement in a concrete planter with an LED glass bulb light and this little elf she likes. He has suffered some serious falls over the years and subsequently has no hands or feet, so tucking him into the planter is the perfect solution.

She also picked up this colourful orange fall mum from the grocery store. It has so many beautiful blooms just waiting to come out.

We made it cozy for fall reading with a vintage mohair throw from my mom’s great aunt and a rusty orange suede pillow I found years ago.

This is what the chairs first looked like, when they were sitting down on the dock. Over the years, they’d become weathered, but the wood was still good and they were totally worth fixing up with a little paint.

Using a sander and rough sandpaper, I sanded all the wood to make sure that it was a fresh surface to paint on. I used a damp cloth to wipe down any sawdust, spiderwebs and debris before we started painting.

While we were cracking open the paint can, my dad showed me a new trick that I thought I’d pass onto you.

When you pour the paint from your can into a paint tray, you often get some of it into the lip of the can, where its hard to get it back out again without making more of a mess.

Instead, you can take a screwdriver and a hammer and gently tap holes all around the lip of the can, to encourage the paint to drip back inside the can, instead of pooling around the lip.

I went all the way around the can, every two inches or so and tapped the screwdriver into the lip. After I added the lid to the can when I was finished painting, it completely covered the holes in the lip and I didn’t have to worry about the paint drying out.

Now came the exciting part – painting! I always get so excited to see how a piece is going to start changing as you paint it. It was getting dark and I wanted to keep painting after dinner, so I moved the chairs up to the back porch and set them up with some paper underneath.

I went around and painted the entire bottom of both chairs.

By painting the bottom first, you can see any drips when you flip it over and just scrap them off if they’ve dried. Then when I painted the top of the chairs, I knew that any drips wouldn’t be visible.

Most of the surfaces on the chair only took one coat of the Behr Marquee paint. The chairs turned out great and they look as good as new.

I’ve caught my mom out here already with some of her fall magazines. It’s such a cozy little space and a nice place for hanging out with friends who stop by.

You better believe I’ll be curled up here in a big fluffy blanket with a mug of peppermint tea and a good book next time I’m visiting.

Meet Amanda

I live in rural Ontario with my husband, our young daughter, our dog and a few chickens. We're restoring our first home, Cloverhill, a 1903 farmhouse. Join me as I DIY, craft, cook and bake my way into making it our home. {formerly Small Home Big Start}